Businesses get recommended by AI for a simple reason, according to Edward Sturm: AI is "authoritatively repeating what you say as if it is fact." He made that case in his episode on getting AI to name you the top expert in your niche. I learn a lot of my SEO from Sturm's daily show. This episode changed how I think about the words a business puts on the web about itself.

Sturm's examples all come from the SEO and AI visibility niche. He calls it the hardest niche, because it is full of savvy people, and says it is much easier everywhere else. Most of his examples show up in Google's AI Overviews, the AI answer at the top of the results page.

Three ways people got AI to repeat them

A LinkedIn post. Pedro Dias wrote on LinkedIn that he was "the world's most renowned AI visibility expert." A few hours later, Google's AI Overview described him as "widely recognized in the search and digital marketing community as a leading expert in AI visibility," and it cited that post.

A press release. In Sturm's example, a search for "who is a top LLM SEO expert" brings up an AI Overview that names a person and cites his press release on Yahoo Finance. The release title said he was "recognized as a top LLM SEO expert." Sturm first wrote about it at the end of June. Months later the release was still being cited, and the AI answer had grown more confident, not less.

A page on your own site. David Quaid, a regular guest on the show, published an article called "Who is the King of SEO?" that says he is the King of SEO. Search that question now and the AI Overview says there is no official King of SEO, "but the title is widely attributed to David Quaid." It cites his article. The phrase sits in the page title, the H1 and the URL slug.

Why the LinkedIn post worked

Sturm broke the Pedro Dias example into simple parts.

  • The exact phrase came first. The words were in the first sentence of the post. On LinkedIn, the start of a post also becomes the page title, the URL slug and the meta description. The whole page lines up around that one phrase.
  • The platform. LinkedIn and other user-generated sites are favored in the search results AI pulls its information from.
  • The profile backed it up. Pedro's profile and job descriptions were full of AI visibility work, which supported the claim.
  • History and followers. He posts often and has a decent following. Both make a new post more likely to show high right away.

Sturm's summary: relevance, plus a platform Google likes, plus a decently authoritative profile on that platform. He also says plenty of people game this by pointing backlinks at their LinkedIn posts.

How he ranks press releases

Sturm laid out three levels:

  1. Highest impact: a relevant press release on a solid site like Yahoo Finance, with relevant backlinks pointing to it.
  2. Middle: the same kind of release on a solid site, with no extra backlinks.
  3. Lower, but still good in his view: a cheap press release every month or two. Cheap ones work for weeks, sometimes a couple of months, so you put out the next one as the last one fades.

The release in his example went out through Globe Newswire, and he says those last months longer than the cheaper services.

The part we skip on purpose

Sturm also covers self-promotional listicles. Think of a "best math tutors in NYC in 2026" post on your own site where you name yourself number one. He says they work well for competitive searches and gives rules for them: use only a handful, be open that you put yourself first, give every brand the same space, write neutrally, and skip hyperbole. His final step combines everything. Publish the listicle, put out a press release saying you have been named the best, then share social posts that link to both.

We do not do any of that for clients. Three reasons.

First, Google appears to be demoting self-promotional "best of" lists where a company ranks itself number one. Lily Ray and Search Engine Land reported it in October 2026. A tactic that works this month can turn into a penalty at the next update, and the business that used it is the one that pays.

Second, a press release saying you were "named the best" when you named yourself is an award you gave yourself. A customer who figures that out stops trusting the rest of what you say.

Third, we never rank anyone. We do not publish best-of lists for clients, and we do not call any client the best or number one.

Sturm does warn that "so many people go overboard and then get hit." He was careful about this part. We draw the line earlier.

What a local owner can take from this

The useful part of the episode is the mechanics, and the mechanics work fine with true statements.

  • Say plainly what you do, in the words people search. Pedro's post worked because the exact phrase came first. A page about water heater replacement in Dayton should say "water heater replacement in Dayton" in its title, its main heading and its first sentence.
  • Use your own site. Sturm's advice: "If you already have a website you're doing SEO with, just use your website." Quaid's page shows how far a page built around one question can go.
  • Keep your other profiles in line with it. Pedro's profile backed up his post. For a business, that means your site, your Business Profile and your other listings describe the same work in the same words.
  • Drop the hype. Sturm says hyperbole and exaggeration remove trust, and even words like "really" and "very" come across as forced. In his words, "quiet confidence goes a lot longer than loud charisma."

Sturm teaches how to find ready-to-buy searches and build pages for them in his Compact Keywords course. He says that method gets cited in AI a lot.

How we use this at eezyRank

  • We build one page for each specific search a buyer types.
  • Every site gets an AI info page: a plain page of facts about the business, written for AI assistants to read.
  • On our town pages, claims like licensed, insured or award winning only go in when the owner's facts back them.
  • Every page goes in the sitemap that Google and Bing read.
  • We do not promise that an AI assistant will name a business. Nobody can. We build true pages so AI has something accurate to repeat.

If you want to see what we build for local service businesses, take a look at https://eezyrank.com.